The crypto industry has united against AI monopolies: an open letter demanding access to advanced models.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute, together with dozens of companies in the digital assets, cybersecurity, and open-source development sectors, has published an open letter to the world's leading AI labs. The core demand is to provide vetted developers with reliable access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models to protect financial infrastructure.
This is not just another petition. It is about a systemic imbalance that is becoming increasingly obvious: defenders of the open financial ecosystem are left without the most powerful tools, while attackers are actively arming themselves with AI. The letter has been signed by representatives of the Bitcoin Policy Institute, Coinbase, Block, Blockstream, BitGo, Anchorage Digital, Bitwise, Trezor, MARA, Foundry, Galaxy, Strategy, Strike, and River — an impressive list that covers nearly the entire industry.
Infrastructure defenders are left without the strongest tools
In the letter, the authors emphasize that the need for such access has become critical over the past few weeks. People ensuring the security of digital assets and open-source software need the latest AI capabilities to thoroughly check for vulnerabilities. Without this, they cannot counter increasingly sophisticated attacks.
The scale of the threat is enormous. The Bitcoin network alone safeguards more than a trillion dollars, and the entire digital assets ecosystem — from wallets and cryptographic libraries to custody systems, exchanges, and payment networks — manages trillions of dollars. Behind this open-source code are the personal savings of millions of people: retirement funds, business capital, reserve funds. A single vulnerability can wipe out a lifetime of savings — which is precisely why digital assets are so attractive to cyber attackers.
Defenders are in the least privileged position
Cutting-edge models are capable of analyzing vast codebases, finding weaknesses, and accelerating complex technical work — both for defense and for attacks. The authors expect these capabilities to continue spreading through public open-source models, unauthorized access to corporate systems, and specialized tools for cyberattacks.
Today, leading labs and select partners see new cyber capabilities months before they become available to the rest of the ecosystem. At the same time, access pathways to such tools for qualified defenders remain limited and inconsistent. Many digital asset developers, including Bitcoin Core maintainers, are excluded from lab programs. Restrictions on public frontier systems often block legitimate security work, forcing defenders to conduct critical checks on less powerful open-weight models.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute has received several independent reports from open-source maintainers: experienced attackers, possibly from other countries, are conducting continuous AI-assisted attacks, and small teams struggle to keep up with that pace. Even when systems remain secure, responding to constant and sophisticated activity diverts scarce maintainer resources away from development and routine security work.
What the coalition is asking of the labs
The coalition demands the creation or expansion of permanent trusted access programs for qualified defenders of open financial infrastructure. Such programs should provide early, controlled access to the strongest cyber models and, where appropriate, pre-release versions. Conditions include sufficient computing power and the ability for autonomous agents to work on long-running tasks — without this, meaningful security testing is simply impossible.
Additionally, secure environments for analyzing private or closed-source code are requested, as well as the right for small, non-profit, and independent maintainers to participate on equal footing with large companies and governments. Finally, the coalition demands a direct channel for coordinated vulnerability reporting, remediation, and communication with lab security teams.
My take: This letter is a timely and important signal that the AI arms race in cybersecurity has already begun, and defenders are currently losing. If the labs ignore this call, we risk a wave of incidents that will undermine trust in digital assets as a whole. The industry is ready to help identify trusted participants and coordinate efforts — all that remains is for the AI giants to hear this call.